Customer Reviews

Furious Rubato

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Creativity can come in fits and starts, and that is just what this album feels like -- fits and starts. I have lived with Furious Rubato for about a year now. Clearly, Galper has found something that interests him in the furious rubato model he is exploring. But to record those explorations suggests Galper understands just as clearly what Monk meant when he said, "Play what you like and let the public catch up." That creative energy is what makes great artists the incredible force they can be. But, it ain't easy being green, like an apple, when the world is listening.

At first, this album was like a car wreck I couldn't help watching. I was strangely fascinated by it, by the concepts the musicians seemed to be trying to work out, by the obvious energy of the whole endeavor. But aurally, it is a puzzle. As another reviewer has commented, the drummer on the date is new to playing with Galper, but I don't know if that is the issue. A good bassist should be any group's time keeper, and clearly Galper is playing with time on all of these tracks. Jeff Johnson is an excellent bassist, but he seems to have a hard time locking in on a solid groove at tempo, which results in things sounding "mushy" in spots. Instead of everyone in the trio going every which way, it would be more interesting to hear the bass and drums lay down a solid rhythm and then let Galper furiously "rubato-nate" over the top of that rhythm. This seems to happen in places (check out track 3, for example), but the wheels come loose and the cart nearly turns over, risking the apples for the cider heap.

I have not had the time to listen to Galper's recordings in depth since this effort. I have heard Art-Work (Live) twice, which made me feel the apple is not yet ripe and, thus, is not ready to be served to the guests. I am sure Galper will get there, however.

All of that said, if you like to watch the apples ripen, or listen to the bees pollinate the blossoms, you will enjoy this recording. If, however, you are looking for some 'dinner jazz,' well, better look elsewhere. I love Hal Galper's playing, from his 'fusion' work with the Brecker Brothers in the early '70s, his work with the all-acoustic Phil Woods groups of the late '70s, through everything into the mid-2000s. Invitation to a Concert (1990) may be the most brilliant pieces of trio playing I've heard recorded. That album is good for the dinner guests, but if you want a strong shot of whiskey with a tart apple pie, put this album on and fasten your seat belts. It can be a bumpy ride.

Full disclosure: I was a Galper student,and found his lessons essential and very focused.
The rubato of the title is NOT, repeat, is NOT like classical music rubato. It is much more like free jazz, rather than movements ahead and back in tandem, like a chamber group might do. Mr. Galper warns that free tempo playing risks producing performances that all sound similar. He is quite right, it does, and they do, except for the ballads and the bass solos. I get why the ballads have more individual character, they usually do in traditional performance as well, but the bass solos on this record are quite a bit more listenable than the piano solos, or the trading 4's bits, perhaps due to the generally lower level of rhythmic activity.
The general effect of this concept is to produce music that indeed does NOT have a pat-your-foot quality, as Basie used to call it. Whether or not it makes the body move in a circular fashion, as Mr. Galper claims, probably is not true for everyone. I cannot decide if this music is ultra-sophisticated or ultra-naive. Mr. Galper's reputation as a teacher of jazz rhythm is known far and wide in jazz circles. Yet his claim that they are all subdividing and playing to their own shifting internal pulses is not borne out by the effect of the music. If this is occurring, it is all intuitive, and not conscious, at least that I can hear.
The effect is of three very competent jazz musicians improvising without regard for their group cohesion, or any underlying pulse. The liner notes talk about how the players met in the studio, and sat down and began to play. I think this shows rather clearly in the results. The bassist and Mr. Galper are old bandmates, but the drummer is a new person.
So, the jury is still quite undecided as to whether or not this approach to a rhythm section will catch on. Mr. Galper claims that jazz is moving in this direction on several fronts, and that he is merely being overt about his use of traditional song forms and non-traditional time. I hear Keith Jarrett moving AWAY from this approach in his latest trio CD, not towards it. I played this CD in my car for about a week, trying to get used to it, and hear what the players intentions were. I was not very successful. It kinda sounds like a free-for-all, albeit a high-level one. I cannot fathom why players who have spent their lives learning to swing and play together would chuck all their past experience and want to swing independently of each other, and to put aside all the conventions of their Art, which have served so well for so long.
If a note is not on a beat or off a beat, but always in between a beat, all the notes mean less, to my ears at least. I cannot reccommend this recording, but if you want to find out about this for yourself, be advised, it sounds like some late-night practise session, as Mr.Galper says he often does himself.
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